Minutes - Behind The Scenes - Thursday 16 Oct 2008

Nerea · **Joined:** Mon Jun 09, 2008 3:47 pm **Posts:** 14

Minutes
People present:
Ryan, Graeme, Ida, Marian, Nix and Nerea.
Apologies:James, Stephen.

We discussed three applications: Gudrun Hirt, Deborah Pearson and Screen Bandita. About Grudrum project we decided to help her with promotion, with the printer and stuff like that. And about the other two projects we think that the best is to share the money: 50 pounds each. What do you think about it? We couldn't take a decision. Thanks!!!!!!

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:59 pm

hi - this was a really shit meeting. neerea and marian had to wait 30 minutes for it to start. Nix Graeme and I all showed up mostly by accident. We need to do something about these poorly attended meetings.

Awkward because we are friends with Debbie and have awkward history with Gudren. Awkward awkward. And with no real debate we could make no real decisions.

So - £50 to Debbie because we love / owe her despite the fact that the grant, overall, seems a bit thin. Though, we hope it helps with her costs. And £50 + support for Ladyfest.

Or - and i don't mind this - £100 to debs and we loan out our spare projector for free thus giving ladyfest a chance to use it to promote the work they do / make some funds to buy their own. hmmm - maybe?

Any thoughts. The meeting was crappy and deadlocked on these issues.

Also - we felt Billy Liar should get a badge machine because
1) we didn't buy one
2) even if we did buy one it would be lost / broken when someone would want to use it
3) he's moving to glasgow and this will help him promote his album and his music and can make merch to sell and thereby support himself.
4) he is good. totally on the team. and we should help talented folk like him.

r

James · **Posted:** Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:38 am

disagree with billy liar.
the reasons we had at the time still stand
I looked into badge machines, i got to busy to do anything about them.
Maybe someone wants to take on as a project buying one, looking after it and making workshops available for people to use it?

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

ravanwin wrote:

So - £50 to Debbie because we love / owe her despite the fact that the grant, overall, seems a bit thin. Though, we hope it helps with her costs. And £50 + support for Ladyfest.

I will inform the concerned parties of this by email tomorrow night if noone has any better ideas or objections.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:21 am

i think billy liar should get the un-given grant. he is a forest hero and he needs the machine. we had more people at our meeting coming closer to a cnsensus / quorum.

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:28 am

i think you should just give him it,

the discussion about the forest getting a badge machine are legendary and a separate issue . chances are we will lose all the bits and it will become useless .

Gandhi · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:04 am

agree, give him the badge maker, can't we just say it comes out of the Forest Records budget?...if there is a FR budget.

James · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:11 pm

theres not actually a ungiven grant, we gave last months grant to alice in the end

it seems there is a concensous on giving a grant to billy (next months one if no better apps?), I will happily stand aside in that case

but generally i feel that if we have a problem ("chances are we will lose all the bits") we should try to solve it and not be resigned to it.

but this decision making process is shit
altho this is part of the wider problems we seem to be having with WGs at the moment

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:46 pm

wait - thought there was a meeting when we didn't give out a grant - i'm sure there was. give that one to billy. it was a hack decision not to give it to him and alice didn't want to be considered for the grant in competition with billy.

right?

James · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:31 pm

it wasn't a hack decision not to give billy the grant.
it was a decision made after discussion among the very competent people at the meeting
the fact there were only 2 of them is a different matter.

as far as I know, alice wasn't saying move hers back because she wanted to avoid billy.
she did it because of the date of her project.
anyone, no grant was given at that meeting
but then:
viewtopic.php?f=78&t=5285&p=27217&hilit=alice#p27217
so we gave her the grant based on that

so there is no grant owed, no.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:45 pm

well, i strongly object to the decision and didn't say anything at the time but, in hindsight, it was the wrong move and we ought to rectify it.

Alice's money should come from the as yet non-existent external task force budget or we should do as andy says and take the cash from forest records. (i should have piped up in Alice's thread but I was hoping someone else from the collective would see the folly of killing Billy's proposal.) If forest records doesn't have a bottom liner at the moment than I guess we need to come up with a consensus.

Not to be picky but the cider grant was awarded post-post-meeting and nobody complained. it is stupid for the forest to own a badge-maker as it will be destroyed nearly immediately / lost / stolen and is thereby non-conducive to the whole "helping artists" thing. I still don't understand the logic that says forest is buying one so you can't have one. I think a 2 person meeting should be immediately terminated and grants decided online if none attends. I was out of the country.

No offence intended to you or Stephen --- hack refers to the way the decision was made and is not a judgement on the competency of either of you --- these things can be really contentious and I think the main mistake was awarding (or not awarding) grants with only two folk there and there was another mistake in not addressing it sooner which, I guess is my bad. My bad is worse especially if no one else agrees with me. Please, someone agree with me?!? Or don't - if you don't agree. I'll be quiet now.

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

Fair points, i would say.

IIRC Billy Liar's grant apllication was originally discussed at the August BTS WG meeting where a decision was made not to award it a grant and take a proposal to AF WG to look into a badge maker that could be used by Billy.

However, it emerged at the FWG meeting that this was not of any use to Billy and the application went up for consideration again when James and I met.

I think that meeting should have been aborted in hindsight.

What consensus can be reached on-

-the awarding of October's grant

-Billy Liar's badge machine

and how?

nix · **Joined:** Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:49 am **Posts:** 1231

ravanwin wrote:

it is stupid for the forest to own a badge-maker as it will be destroyed nearly immediately / lost / stolen and is thereby non-conducive to the whole "helping artists" thing.

sorry, dude, this is a negative and unhelpful statement. I thnk we should get the badgemaker for Billy Lier. but if there was someone willing to take it on as a resposibility, then there is no reason why we should'nt produce badges as part of orest merchendise and sell them in the shop.

we need to belive in ourselves and our abilities!

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:49 pm

ok - the terninology is negative --- if there was a person who wanted to set up the infrastructure / system of forest owning a badge maker that would be great. but, in my opinion, we are not really a very good top-down kind of organisation and to buy something with the hope that someone someday will take it on as a project is a folly. that more accurately says what i think - i think when there are good people with projects to do we should fund them and assist as much as capable however, to buy something in the hopes that someone will magically appear to create merchandise with it seems a waste of money and resources and - if it comes about in a top-down fashion without support of at least a few folks - then it will quite likely be an unsuccessful endeavour. Sorry for not articulating this position with less negativity. Shorthand.
R

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

This might seem like stating the obvious but i think the Grant process should be for deciding which, if any, of the applications we receive are awarded a grant through the Forest. Funding other than the grants should be decided by the grants process.

I think grants should be awarded on the individual merit of the proposal itself- if someone we know/like/respect has their application refused then they still have other avenues of funding available, espescially if someone from the Forest is fighting their corner.

In this context a badge maker is a promotional tool, so i feel that it is not a suitable proposal for a grant. We generally dislike requests for money for flyers and its not the same but it is similar.

Gandhi · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2008 8:54 am

Quote:

We generally dislike requests for money for flyers and its not the same but it is similar.

This is general consensus but normally flyers and posters etc are for one stand alone alone event/gig whereas Billy will be using it over and over again as part of his promotion and not just one event or gig. i think its quite a big difference between the normal flyer/poster grant requests and something which will be a big part of his ongoing continuous promotion.

We like Billy, it's a good proposal and we know he's not going to waste the money. And when i say we like Billy, I'm not using this as an excuse as to why we should just give him the grant, but I'm saying many people know him, he's volunteered at the Forest, we like his music, we want to support him and we know how passionate he is about his music and I think a badge maker would be a really good investment for him.

if this isn't coming out of the Grant scheme then what about Forest Records money? I know i mentioned it before but noone seemed to pick up on it, as there's no point making money from the Cave without having the ability to invest it in musical based things! I'm not sure if there is a Forest Records budget, or what the Cave money goes towards so a bit of clarification would be good,but maybe thats for another board.

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:23 am

i agree that a badge machine is simlar , but i would perfer that someone wanted to get a badge machine and make they own rather than for glosses flyers . also i think badges are much more affective form of promotion than flyers . people like objects

anyway how do we move forward with this . should it be something that the af meeting should deal with. forest records dont seems to be doing much . or should we reconsider billys application. i dont know billy ,
With regards to us buying a badge machine , it may be a good idea that the shop take responiblity of it . the shop has structure . things like the cave . darkroom ,screen printing and the the cafe seem able to maintaine equiment .

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

Gandhi wrote:

Quote:

We generally dislike requests for money for flyers and its not the same but it is similar.

We like Billy, it's a good proposal and we know he's not going to waste the money. And when i say we like Billy, I'm not using this as an excuse as to why we should just give him the grant, but I'm saying many people know him, he's volunteered at the Forest, we like his music, we want to support him and we know how passionate he is about his music and I think a badge maker would be a really good investment for him.

The fact that i am not familiar with this aspect of the proposal definitely affects my judgement on the matter. I trust and am happy to uphold the opinions of those who have also put forward this point.

Jimmy Bastard · **Posted:** Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:24 pm

Punx need badges.

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

ravanwin wrote:

i think when there are good people with projects to do we should fund them and assist as much as capable however, to buy something in the hopes that someone will magically appear to create merchandise with it seems a waste of money and resources and - if it comes about in a top-down fashion without support of at least a few folks - then it will quite likely be an unsuccessful endeavour.

very well put.

Newington Bandit · **Joined:** Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:32 pm **Posts:** 102

Maybe Billy will let us borrow the machine if we need to make badges...
Maybe Billy can be in charge of the Badge making machine and keep it safe in Glasgow

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

ok so getting a Billy a badge machine seems a goer- is this a successful grant application for October's grant then? or is the money coming from someplace else and the October grant going to the other proposals as above?

James · **Posted:** Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:26 pm

well, I still feel grants should be for helping as many people as possible and not one persons commercial endeavours, as much as we like that person. I don't like this as a grant, or indeed at all, but will stand aside.

I agree with Ryan that just buying something in the hope someone will look after it is a bad idea. that's why I just didn't buy one after the mass enthusiasm on a previous thread, I was looking for someone to look after it properly first.

the ideal is that someone comes forward who wants to run this, the forest buys one, we look after it, billy is very welcome to use ours any time he wants. why is billy saying using one we had would be unsuitable? I honestly can't think of a good reason.

Also, several people have mentioned the external task force budget recently. We don't have one, and several people had serious problems with the idea when it was 1st raised so please stop talking like it is a done deal.

The grants meeting probably should not have happened with only two people, but there seems to be a general problem at the moment and I would like everyone who commented on this to comment on viewtopic.php?f=29&t=5414

As for going forwards ... I don't know. Making decisions on this on the BB I think is very bad. Some people have said they don't like commenting on things here. I'm sure this won't be a popular suggestion, but postpone this till the next meeting, or have a FWG very soon (which maybe we could do with anywhere) and discuss it there?

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

James wrote:

As for going forwards ... I don't know. Making decisions on this on the BB I think is very bad. Some people have said they don't like commenting on things here. I'm sure this won't be a popular suggestion, but postpone this till the next meeting, or have a FWG very soon (which maybe we could do with anywhere) and discuss it there?

But also some people don't like to/don't have enough time to attend meetings so in either case not everyone can get involved. We also established a couple of meetings ago that any decisions made in a meeting should be supported by consensus from the bb, otherwise a project might have lots of support from the community but be vetoed at the meeting according to a few people's opinion.

(I don't think this happened to Billy's application by the way, because support on his thread was mainly for the provision of Forest badge making facilities.)

I don't think it should be necessary to take this to another meeting. I think a consensus should be reached here on how we want to proceed.

The way i see it, only a couple of people have said they are not that keen on the idea of Billy getting some money for a badge machine- these people will not block the proposal and several people have voted in support of the idea and Billy himself.

I can see 3 proposals-

1-£100 to Billy Liar as October Grant
2-£50 to both Debbie and Ladyfest as Oct Grant and Billy Liar £100 from Forest Records budget
3-£50 to both Debbie and Ladyfest as Oct Grant, Billy Liar moved forward to Nov for consideration.

Personally i vote against 3 because the proposal has already been sent round the houses.
I vote for 2 because it seems the best compromise.

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Tue Oct 28, 2008 10:09 am

i vote for 2 ,if its possible .

ravanwin · **Posted:** Tue Oct 28, 2008 10:45 am

i'd say 2 is sound and fair.

Gandhi · **Posted:** Tue Oct 28, 2008 11:29 am

2 sounds good. good to utilise the Forest Records budget on music sh*t and that frees up grants for non music sh*t for arty sh*t. sh*t.

graeme · **Joined:** Sat Oct 21, 2006 5:52 pm **Posts:** 312

I say 2 too.

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

cool- so does the award for forest records money have to go to an artist facilities meeting? Who are the active members of Forest Records?

michaelbowdidge · **Posted:** Sun Nov 02, 2008 11:21 pm

Idle curiosity just lead me to devour this entire thread in one sitting - f*cking hell - that was INTENSE.....

Jane · **Joined:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:10 pm **Posts:** 1557

Yes, 2, badges for billy.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Mon Nov 03, 2008 12:32 am

records has a budget but no main person in charge.

i'd guess gaz, jane or dan would ve bottom line on this

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

right so does somebody want to give billy the good news and take the matter to Artists Facilities or should i just assume the money has been awarded and ask billy for his address?

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Wed Nov 05, 2008 7:55 pm

i think it should just be awarded without the meeting in this case . if jane is a bottonliner then she has said yes . In future this kind of issue should of been referred to af meeting via a agenda point with a email informing billy .

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Nov 06, 2008 11:10 am

aye. Stephan can you mail billy?

stephengoodall · **Joined:** Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:29 pm **Posts:** 817

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